"Turning flesh into gold? All the different tissues? With one protein? No offense but Devisor stuff is weird. Also, yeah, boxing glove, that was a shocker, it jostled my camera and my left visual field was at fifteen degrees to my right for a minute."

"Yeah, I did not accomplish human alchemy today. I did some cool stuff, though, and they let me keep the protein designs, I'm going to see if I can springboard off of some of that."

"Ooh, nifty. Mine was fixing a bunch of broken stuff--" she explains excitedly about the metamaterial sphere--"but they needed it all back afterward. I'm really excited about classes, though, I'm hoping to have chassis version 2 done by the end of the semester and I'll probably end up using a bunch of what I learn in it."

"Nice. Not gonna just go piecemeal? I think that's how I'd do it, but you're not me."

"Well, there's a lot of interdependencies--need to do legs before arms if the arms are going to be heavy, need to do bigger batteries before anything else heavy so I don't have to charge every hour, need to have enough room for the batteries in the torso . . . I think the final result will be better if I do it all in one go. I can parallelize it with mental improvements, though, and those are easier to do one at a time."

Lucy nods. "And that's why you're an engineer and I'm a biologist, I guess."

Smile, shrug. "Any classes you're especially excited about? I can't imagine we'll have much overlap outside of gen eds."

She grins. "There's this one about theoretical applications of prions that I can't wait to start, and one that's just an overview of biodevises through history that sounds kind of boring but it's strongly recommended because stuff like that gives you ideas. Devisors have to have a lot of ideas."

"Yeah, it's the same for gadgeteers. I want to make a living selling my inventions someday, so I'll need to find things people want that nobody else has figured out yet."

"Or that they've only figured out as a Devise. If you could figure out how to make an optical computer that can be reproduced you'd be a millionaire at least."

"Yeah, that too, Devisors are a good source of inspiration."

The conversation seemingly concluded, Lucy flips open her computer and begins doing something or other.

Margaret flips open her computer and starts looking for campus jobs.

There's always space on the sewer maintenance team. It pays $40 per hour.

Regular campus maintenance pays $20 per hour.

There's an opening in the forestry services department, at $15 per hour.

There's tutoring, once she's passed a class here with a B+ or higher.

The campus store could use clerks, at $12 per hour.

She cannot in fact get sick from sewer germs, but she can still get grossed out. Maybe if her next gen chassis is very easy to clean. How does one sign up for campus maintenance?

She can send off an email to the current team, and they'll get back to her.

She'll do that, then. And then, since she still can't benefit from the cafeteria, she'll take an evening walk through the better-mapped parts of the tunnel system.

The tunnel system is a place of many wonders!

At one point she encounters a short boy with violently curly hair, who looks her over wonderingly. "Wow, who built you?"

"I built myself! Name's Margaret, nice to meet you!"

He jumps. "Oh! Wow, sorry, didn't realize - you must be new. I'm Elijah Camden, codename Nebbish. Um, this might sound like a personal question, but how's your surge protection?"

"Right, codenames, mine's Upload. And yeah, I'm new, no worries. My surge protection should be pretty good, but I haven't plugged into any crummy outlets so far. Why do you ask?"

"You're gonna want to upgrade it. Whateley has some kids who can cause electrical surges just by being near you. Bad enough when you're a gadgeteer, but I definitely wouldn't want to risk it in a robot body, you know? You also want some kind of magnet protection - maybe even a Faraday cage built into your head. Speedsters sometimes emit a magnetic field."

"Oooh, good to know. My head is already a faraway cage, fortunately, but I'll make sure to check all my safeties. I'm planning on spending this semester making a new body with nice lab supplies instead of dumpster-dived grab-bag, but it wouldn't do to get hurt in the meantime."

Elijah smiles. "Good, good. I'm impressed with the design sensibility you're showing there, if you really had to scrounge for supplies - you look better than some of the stuff that walks out of Workshop, I'll tell you that much."

"Thanks! I was pretty budget-constrained, yeah, I'm really looking forward to Workshop." It's clear from her voice that she'd be grinning if she had lips.